Waveguides constrain or guide the propagation of electromagnetic waves along a path defined by the physical construction of the waveguide. The use of optical channel waveguides is widespread in integrated optical circuits. In particular, an optical channel waveguide provides both vertical and lateral confinement of an optical wave while allowing low-loss signal propagation.
An optical channel waveguide having small cross-sectional dimensions allows high optical power densities to be established for moderate optical input powers while the waveguiding nature provides potentially long interaction lengths. This combination of effects is extremely attractive for a variety of optical functions such as second harmonic generation, optical amplification, wavelength conversion, and phase modulation (when an appropriate electrode geometry is incorporated).
In general, a goal of waveguide fabrication is to produce waveguides which support a single guided mode of propagation of the electromagnetic waves. A number of techniques have been used with considerable success to fabricate optical channel waveguides. These include ion-exchange in glass substrates, ion indiffusion or proton exchange in LiNbO.sub.3 substrates, pattern definition by laser ablation, photolithography of spun polymer films, and epitaxial growth and selective etching of compound semiconductor films.
A drawback of these techniques is that they cannot be used with a significant number of useful optical materials, e.g., many laser crystals. Another drawback of these prior art techniques is that the equipment required to fabricate the optical waveguide is expensive.
Therefore, there is a need for methods for forming optical waveguides from separate preformed optical materials in which the methods comprise a plurality of mechanical processing steps, e.g., lapping, polishing, and/or dicing, and bonding steps, e.g., attaching with adhesives. Such methods are adaptable to fabrication of optical waveguides from any, if not all, optical materials. Furthermore, such methods are suitably performed using readily available and inexpensive equipment.